It’s been three months since Liz Kendall, the minister responsible for the Department of Work and Pensions, announced potentially the biggest-ever cuts to health and disability benefits.
Her plans aren’t just ill-advised — they’re incredibly dangerous. When I was asked to give evidence to the DWP select committee just a few weeks ago, I told them of the risks. I mentioned that freezing universal credit health will mean an average loss of £1,100 for three million people, and that almost 3.8 million Disabled people will lose payments of some kind, with some of us set to lose 60% of our income.
Speaking to the committee, it was impossible to sugarcoat — the minister’s proposals will lead to people losing their lives. The evidence that I, Ellen Clifford, and others provided to the select committee partially filled the information gap the government has left regarding its plans since they were announced in March.
The plans had such little thought for Disabled people that the government didn’t even have basic alternative formats, such as BSL and Easy Read versions, available when they announced the consultation. Not that the consultation even covers the biggest proposed changes to Personal Independence Payment and Universal Credit. Instead, those will be voted on by MPs. In fact, the government is suggesting 22 changes, but just 10 of them are open to consultation.
For the past months, campaigners’ lives have been filled with the endless process of Freedom of Information Act requests and parliamentary questions, all to fill in the blanks left by the government.
Alongside this, despite promising a consultative process, the government is trying to force through a vote (predicted to be in June) on proposals it won’t even share the proper information about. How will the new PIP assessment work? Nobody knows yet. It’s under review. What will the new employment support be? Nobody knows, except it might only come into full effect in 2029, three years after some of the most brutal cuts have been made.
Disabled people face additional costs of an average of £1000 per month, making the proposed cuts in income for two million Disabled people even more callous. Right now, Disabled people across the country already can’t afford food, energy, rent or transport — we are statistically more likely to rely on food banks. The government’s plan to remove £5 billion from us is a political choice, and a dangerous one.
But some Labour politicians are waking up to the dangers this bill poses. As Nadia Whittome, Nottingham East MP told me: “It is deeply concerning that MPs are being asked to vote for proposals that will affect some of the poorest people in society without the government setting out the full impact. While the government claims its measures will help more people to work, it has not provided any evidence”
The government has promised that, in their words, Disabled people with “the most severe impairments” won’t lose support. Speaking to the select committee, I had to explain how empty that promise is. All they’ve said is that this cohort, which will not be subject to reassessment, will be a small number of people. What sort of protection is that?
Despite all these dangers, Liz Kendall spoke in front of experts at the IPPR last month to double down on the cuts that have been panned by her parliamentary colleagues and the public alike. I was in the room when she spoke about “big changes” “to deliver greater fairness and opportunity”. Ms Kendall talked about how the current system isn’t good enough “for people in Blackpool, Birkenhead or Blaenau Gwent”.
But what do her plans have in store for those communities? In Blackpool, over 6,000 people will lose PIP support, which could see them going without thousands of pounds they need to deal with the extra costs of disability. In Birkenhead, almost 20% of the local community will see some form of cut to their health or disability benefit support. And in Blaenau Gwent, almost 12,000 people will have health-related social security cut.
Rather than delivering change to these communities, Ms. Kendall is delivering business as usual. Yet another government is telling Disabled and working-class people who need support — you are the problem, you don’t deserve support. The risks of Kendall’s plans are so great that her own MPs have felt the need to step in. The DWP select committee has just written to the government, calling for it to delay any changes to personal independence payment (PIP) eligibility and universal credit (UC) rates.
They have had to warn the government that their plans “might not incentivise work, as the government hopes, but rather push people deeper into poverty, worsen health, especially in more deprived areas, and move people further from the labour market, as evidence suggests has happened in the past with similar reforms.”
Now MPs are now responsible for changing this disastrous status quo. They need to step up and fill the void left by their frontbench colleagues. The stakes are too high, and many lives are at risk. As Nadia put it: “MPs should not be expected to roll the dice on measures that could have a devastating impact on their constituents.”
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